My Lords, despite the eminence of the noble Baroness, I hope the Government will be robust in resisting the amendment. I have one general principle about it. Over a long time in Parliament, I have been involved directly and indirectly with a very large number of inquiries; I have participated in some. There is a proportionality rule: is the likely outcome of the inquiry and the chances of its recommendations being implemented sufficient to justify the cost of setting it up and the bureaucracy involved? In the majority of cases in which I have been involved, the answer to that question is no, and I strongly suspect that this time the answer is no again.
All of us who have been in public life know full well that there has always been collusion between the police and journalists—certainly ever since I was first in the House of Commons, nearly 40 years ago. It is lamentable, but it has been the case. I doubt that anything else that will be turned up in this inquiry would justify the initial cost.
I have one further point. It is absolutely right that police officers who take money for supplying confidential information—that is, are bribed—should be the subject of criminal procedure. But that is also, in the generality of cases, true of the journalists. What we are dealing with when a journalist pays a police officer is a criminal conspiracy to do an unlawful thing.
Occasionally, there will be instances where the public interest is genuinely involved. But one thing I have noted in recent months and years is the unwillingness of juries to convict journalists for doing this, because quite specious claims of public interest are always invoked. In general, it is public curiosity, not interest, which justifies the process. I very much doubt that we will get juries to see the rightness of what I have been saying, so there may have to be another way forward.
I very much hope that the press industry—editors in particular—recognises the impropriety in the generality of cases of journalists paying police officers for information. The fact that juries will not convict for these purposes is neither here nor there. I would hope that senior journalists would incorporate into the contracts of employment with their journalists a prohibition on doing what I have just described, and that editors and proprietors would be willing to enforce that prohibition.
Reverting to my first point, I am sorry, but I cannot support the noble Baroness’s very eloquent submission to your Lordships’ House.
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